under your rolling thunder
by vega-de-la-lyre
Summary: McCoy and Chapel are trapped in a cave on a rain planet for an indefinite period of time. ...Draw your own conclusions.


"I think that's all of them, sir," Chapel says, sliding her bag over her shoulder and heading to the mouth of the cave, and McCoy flips open the communicator —

"All the Djal'anns should be evacuated and in sickbay right now," he says as he follows her. "We're done here. Two to beam up."

"Ah." Scotty's voice sounds fuzzy and weak, and McCoy's eyebrows shoot up alarmingly. "About that. We're, ah, getting some kind of interference here, can't get a lock on you two, Doctor. Whole planet's a dead zone. Just give us a mo'."

"Doctor McCoy," Chapel interrupts. Her slim silhouette is framed against a brilliant red sky as she stares up the clouds; McCoy has a brief moment to register how electric and charged the air feels when the hem of her uniform ruffles in a sudden breeze and the sky is lashed with furious violet lightning.

Thunder booms portentously overhead. He can feel it rumbling through the rock beneath the soles of his boots.

Scotty comes through again. "Chekov tells me this kind of thing's perfectly normal for this time of year, nothing to worry about, just a temporary glitch…"

Scotty sounds somewhat uncertain, though, and McCoy just stops himself from snarling. He does not have _time_ for this, he has about a dozen gravely wounded refugees in his sickbay that need tending, he has _work_ to do. "Well, how long is it gonna take before we're clear, Scotty?" he says with infinite patience.

"See, that's the thing," Scotty says, volume already starting to fade and sputter; McCoy shakes the communicator uselessly. "I'm hearing it could be anything from two hours to two weeks — "

His voice cuts out abruptly, and McCoy is left staring blankly at an unresponsive communicator.

"Well, damn," he says into the ringing silence, and Chapel turns back to him, her blue eyes wide, just as the clouds split and the rain begins to slice down.

* * *

Christine unpins her frizzing, wildly curling hair as she walks back and forth in front of the mouth of the cave, letting it fall free over her shoulders. Bored, she makes a few desultory attempts to put it back up, but abandons that idea as useless after a minute or two.

"Quit your pacing," McCoy says behind her, "and come sit down, goddamit, you're making me dizzy."

She crosses her arms and looks at him sceptically. He is sitting cross-legged on the wet rock, half in shadow, sorting through their medkits — looking for what, she doesn't know. Alcohol, maybe.

She hopes devoutly that he finds some. Alcohol. Alcohol is good. It might just make this situation tolerable.

"I mean it," he adds, and says roughly, as his face is lit vividly by another streak of lightning, "And get away from there before you get electrocuted, I don't intend on fixing you up if you get yourself fried."

"Well, it's not like we have anything else to do," she says dryly, and doesn't add _a medical crisis might liven things up_ or _you are the most charmingly and maddeningly paranoid man I've ever met_ because he might just actually take her head off, but she strips off her blood-splattered and faintly damp labcoat and sits down next to him anyway.

He gives up on the medkits, leaving their contents scattered, and leans back against the cave wall with a sigh. Christine tries valiantly to ignore his closeness, the slow rhythm of his breathing, the heavy warmth of his body where it presses against her arm and hip; she turns away slightly, letting her hair disguise her pinking cheeks.

"So," he says after a long moment, and drums his fingers on his thigh.

"Yeah," she says into her lap, and begins to pick absently at her dirty fingernails.

She is startled out of her skin when McCoy reaches over and clamps his hand over hers; "Don't," he says, smiling just a little, drawing his hand away. "I never pegged you for the fidgety type, Chapel."

"Learn something new every day," Chapel says, managing to look unruffled while she is doing her best to slow the hammering of her heart.

The water is rising higher in the valley below.

* * *

When McCoy wakes, it is to almost complete darkness, to cold and wet, to the sound of still-roaring rain, and to the knowledge that his back and his bones are aching; he is, he thinks, far too old for this shit, far too old for sleeping on bare wet stone.

"Morning," Chapel says brightly above his head, despite the blackness. He turns in her direction to find her still sitting against the cave wall, a padd now propped up against her knees; she's not looking at him, eyes fixed on the screen as she idly scrolls with one finger. The soft curves of her face are lit with a dim blue glow.

"You're awfully chipper," he says, irritable and sore, pitching his voice louder to be heard over the rain. He raises himself up on his elbows before he sits up all the way; his joints scream at him in protest.

"Well, it's not every day you get to go nearly mad with boredom cooped up in a cave with your cranky boss," Chapel says, peeking at him now with a saucy look in her eyes.

"Hey now," he says, sitting up all the way to find her wadded-up labcoat where he'd lain; she'd made him a pillow as he slept. He levels an accusing finger at her. "That's insubordination."

She pulls a simpering face of mock-apology. "Mild insubordination at worst," she says, and goes back to her padd with a raised eyebrow and a smile tugging at the corner of her lip.

After a moment McCoy leans in close, elbow knocking into her side. A soft noise of surprise escapes her, and she looks at him, startled. "What's that you're reading?" he asks.

Chapel tilts the screen so he can see it. "Biochem journal," she says. "New clinical trial results."

He doesn't say anything, and she shrugs a bit, almost defensively or challengingly. "It's not every little girl's dream to place second fiddle, you know," she says. "I plan on going back to get my doctorate — someday, I suppose. When all this is done." She gestures as she talks, her wrist flicking into a wave at the distant future.

The blue glow that highlights her cheeks and eyes throws the tiredness that tugs at her face into sharp relief. "You should get some sleep," he says quietly even as she visibly fights back a yawn.

She clearly wants to say no, but she smiles ruefully. "Well, alright then," she says, and hands him the still-silent communicator as she powers down her padd. "But you wake me up if anything changes."

It's unlikely, but he nods agreement.

He leans back and stares outside as she struggles into a more comfortable position; the blackness outside the cave is relieved only by the wild streaks of lightning that still slash intermittently across the sky. McCoy draws Chapel's hair back across her cheek, back from her face, and when she sighs, half-asleep already, he drops his hand down to her waist and pulls her curled body close against his — for warmth, he tells himself, she needs the sleep and she needs his heat.

Her pulse flutters frenziedly under his touch.

* * *

McCoy's hand shakes Christine hastily out of a troubled sleep.

"Whazzat?" she says, sitting bolt upright, and he's already apologising —

"Sorry," he says. "Sorry, sorry. I thought Scotty was coming through there, but: nothing. Go back to sleep."

Heart coming back down to its normal rate, Christine slumps against the rocks. "Well, I can't sleep _now_," she says, looking around. The light outside is pink-tinged and brightening by the minute, though the rain doesn't show any sign of letting up. It takes her a moment to realise that she'd pushed her labcoat off in awakening; he'd pulled it up to her chin as she slept. She drags it back over herself now, pushing her arms through the sleeves. It's gotten colder.

"Is it really so bad?" he asks abruptly, turning the communicator over in his hands. "Being a nurse, I mean."

"No!" she says, scrubbing a hand over her face sleepily. "No, really, it's not. I love my job, you know that. It's just — well, it's not all I want to do with my life. It's the greatest opportunity in the world, it's been fantastic, but once it's over, I have more I want to do. Well. If we ever get off this rock," she adds, half-smiling.

McCoy is quiet for a moment, and then he nods slowly. "Good for you," he says. "I meant it. I've never really had that kind of ambition — I just kind of fall into things. I became a doctor because my daddy was, I joined Starfleet because I was drunk and miserable and it seemed like the best ticket out of town. I got my place on this ship through dumb luck and someone else dying and Jim Kirk hauling my sorry ass along for the ride because he's good to his friends." He pokes her knee, but his eyes are earnest: "I admire you for that. Honestly."

She flushes; she's never been able to take a compliment gracefully, and she casts around for something to say, to push the conversation off herself.

"But you know, even if it was by accident," Christine says finally, she can't quite help the words from spilling from her lips, "you're still the best damned doctor I've ever seen."

"Ha," he says, but in the red half-light she can see that he's smiling.

They subside into silence, and she doesn't even realise her teeth are chattering until he drops an arm around her shoulder and tugs her close. She leans her head on his shoulder and closes her eyes, tucking her hands in close to her side.

"Cold?" he says, chin ontop her head; her skull vibrates when he talks.

"And hungry, and wet, and tired, and _hungry_, did I mention that?" But she keeps her tone light, to temper her words, and she shakes her head. "Just remind me never to step a foot off the ship without _pants_ on. Whoever designed women's uniforms for Starfleet is a sadistic asshole."

"Oh, I don't know," he says, and there is a new note in his voice, dark and teasing and unknowable; "I kind of like these skirts."

His hand traces down her bare thigh, and goosepimples spring up on her skin. She shivers. "Misogynist," she says, suddenly both very awake and very warm, "centuries of feminism down the drain."

"No one's making you wear them," he says, quite reasonably, and she bites her lip when his hand rides higher under her skirt, her muscles jumping under his touch.

"Well, you see," she says, and drops her voice to a whisper as she rocks back onto her heels so she can see his face, well out of range of his hands: "I do look damn good in them."

McCoy laughs at that, throws his head back against the cave wall and just laughs.

"Oh, honey," he says, eyes suddenly alight with purple-and-white as thunder cracks above them and he tugs at her wrist, "You really do, you know. Come here."

She leans in onto her knees and kisses him soundly, and finds once she's there she can't quite drag herself away, and then he's pulling her into his lap and tight against him and her hands slip down his chest and she loses herself entirely to his hands and his teeth and his wide lovely eyes —

* * *

Scotty's voice, when they finally hear it next, is thoroughly unwelcome.

"Good _morning_, you two, we are a go for beaming! Stand by."

"Fuck," McCoy says, only half-aware of what's going on, scrabbling for his pants and the communicator at the same time. "_Fuck_."

Chapel giggles helplessly as she struggles into her uniform, her hair a pale cloud around her paler face, and he swipes at her cheek distractedly; she has yellow mud smeared across her cheekbone.

"You think that's funny, do you," he says to her, and adds into the communicator, "Ah, just hold on a sec, we don't have our supplies together — "

"My boot," Chapel hisses, hand closing around his forearm, "that's my _boot_," and as the world begins to flare white around them he just manages to tug his shirt down and run a desperate hand through his hair —

When they appear, at last, on the transporter pad, they are both rumpled and dirty and Chapel is still holding McCoy's arm. She drops it abruptly; Scotty raises his eyebrows at her and she mutters, "not a damned _word_" as she hurries past him to her quarters.

Scotty turns to McCoy, mouth opening slightly.

"What the lady said," McCoy snarls as he limps off the transporter pad in the opposite direction, wearing only one boot.


End file.
